


Father of the Wolf

by ValmureEld



Series: I Tried Not to Get Into the Witcher and Look Where That Got Me [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Growing Up, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14987132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValmureEld/pseuds/ValmureEld
Summary: From the moment Visenna left Geralt at Kaer Morhen, Vesimir knew something had changed in his life forever. It was no longer his life alone.





	Father of the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> Guys omf this got away from me. I have a lot of headcannon and feelings about Vesimir and Geralt and Eskel okay.

The night Visenna lay Geralt in Vesimir’s arms, he didn’t sleep a single moment. He sat awake, holding the infant and wondering what he was going to do. He was a Witcher. He didn’t know any other life. Nothing was certain but his training and his destiny to die before his time.

Nothing but death, and Geralt. He was scared. Kaer Morhen was no place for an infant, and a Witcher was the last kind of man that should be a father, but Vesimir knew from the moment she gave Geralt up that Geralt would be the only other certainty in his life. Geralt was a fact. He’d live. He had to. Vesimir had no idea how he was going to make it through the next day, but he’d figure it out. 

The baby grew into a freckled, sickly child with eyes almost as pale as the winter sky and hair as russet as fall leaves. He did his best to keep up, running before he could walk, gulping down anything presented to him on a plate, but he was weak from the start and Vesimir dreaded the day he was old enough to be submitted for the trials. He’d realized early on that Geralt’s heart wasn’t right. The hole inside had never fully closed from birth, and it created a swishing kind of cadence to the fluttering beat that got louder with exertion. Vesimir sat up with Geralt on long nights during longer winters, listening with closed eyes and furrowed brow to that flutter and wondering if he shouldn’t take Geralt elsewhere--to Nenneke, to anyone, and leave him. 

The thought of risking him to the trials, at times, felt like far too much.

But Geralt grew up around Witchers. He fought hard to be a Witcher. Vesimir caught him mimicking training before he’d even started putting him through his paces, and he knew that he could never send Geralt away. 

He’d make it. He had to.

When Eskel arrived, it got better. A shivering, terrified six-year-old, Eskel stood in the middle of the courtyard and couldn't be moved. He was in a frozen shock state, having been dumped by a merchant who’d taken him as a slave in return for a debt his father couldn’t pay and realized too late that he was more trouble than help. Nothing and nobody got through to him, until little, ginger-haired Geralt took his hand and tugged him off to show him the sword collection. 

They were inseparable after that, and it was because of Geralt that Vesimir finally realized that Eskel was only mute by choice. 

“You can keep on training another year, Geralt. It’s okay,” Vesimir insisted, trying to chew back his fear. He knew Geralt wasn’t going to budge, but his selfish trepidation made him try anyway. “Another year, you’ll be closer to Eskel and--”

 

“But Eskel will have already changed!” Geralt protested, anger and frustration clearly written on his nine-year-old brow. His fists were balled up and inside his little chest Vesimir could hear his weak heart stuttering with his insistence. “I won’t be behind him!”  
Vesimir swallowed, hesitating before resting his hand on Geralt’s shoulder, bowing his head. “No. Of course you won’t.” He sighed, his own heart pounding as he finally relented. It wasn’t like another year of physical work would close up that hole in Geralt’s heart anyway. He had as good a chance at surviving now as he did later, and at least this way he’d be with Eskel.

It tore Vesimir from spirit to bone to listen to Geralt’s screams, but he stayed awake and present for every single day of the mutation process, willing Geralt to hold on. Willing him to make it. He sat between Eskel and Geralt, a hand on each boy’s arm, eyes closed and a cold resolve settling in his gut as the room got quieter and quieter with each new death. 

There were twelve boys in Geralt and Eskel’s group. 

By the end of it, only Geralt and Eskel were still breathing. 

“Vesimir, this is unparalelled, we cannot just throw this away!”

“You can and you will,” Vesimir snarled back, jabbing his finger into Jadrik’s chest, anger surging through his entire body. “You saw how Geralt struggled in basic training. His heart didn’t beat right from the day he was brought here and he never should have survived the trials. It is pure mercy he’s still here and he’s keeping Eskel together! Now you want to put him back in?!” 

“His heart may have been exactly what let him mutate so well!” Jadrik argued back. “That hole could have enhanced the mutation process. There was less to break down--we don’t know! It’s either that or his blood--you said he was born of a sorceress. That’s not even supposed to be possible. Vesimir, he could be the greatest witcher Kaer Morhen has ever produced.”

“He already is,” Vesimir growled. “I won’t let you risk ruining him on a gamble. What if you’re wrong? How are you going to feel if you take one of the most determined young students we have and you make him a vegetable?”

Jadrik’s eyes hardened at that and he shook his head. “This isn’t your choice, Vesimir. The council--”

“Damn the council! I won’t let you kill him!”

“What would you do instead? Rip him away from his friend and run from us? Take him on the road and away from the only family he’s ever known? Make yourself an outcast too?”

Vesimir’s eyes blazed with fury but he ground his teeth, biting at his tongue before finally dropping his eyes. His own exile he could handle, but he couldn’t separate Geralt and Eskel. Geralt would never forgive him and Eskel may not even survive. 

Vesimir had to hold Eskel back when they took Geralt away for a second round. As the boy struggled in his grasp, Vesimir couldn’t tell if he was holding on for his own sake, or for Eskel’s.

Eskel fought him until exhaustion finally claimed him, and Vesimir sat on Geralt’s bed, holding Eskel's sleeping, tear wracked body and waiting. 

When Geralt made it back breathing, that’s all they had. The other Witchers seemed hopeful for a long time, but after a week and a half there was a restlessness to the bustling around him. He’d lay still and unconscious, nothing to indicate that he might yet wake up. Vesimir sat at his side the entire time, listening with a silently growing fury to the mutters of disappointment and even impatience coming from the experimenters. 

While his son lay unresponsive, the others could only shake their heads at how much hope they’d had that he could have taken the trials further. 

It was a flickering night of candles and a distant thunderstorm when Jadrick approached with a needle. Vesimir’s head came up from his folded hands and he blinked blearily, his exhausted mind taking a moment to focus and process what was happening. When he recognized what the other Witcher was carrying he stood up with a clatter, visibly snarling. 

“Don’t you dare,” he spat, hand snapping up to grab Jadrick’s wrist. Jadrick glared at him, shaking his head. 

“The trials failed, Vesimir. It’s cruel to keep him hanging on like this.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Vesimir said, his voice a deadly low. “You do not get to take Geralt, to force him through more horrors and then get impatient when he won’t wake up. You don’t get to silence his heart when he’s fought so hard to keep it beating. Geralt will wake up, or he’ll let go on his own.” 

“Vesimir, you’re too attached. Stand. Down,” Jadrick threatened. Vesimir’s eyes darkened and his grip tightened with warning.

“Last chance.”

Jadrick shook his head and made a move, trying to wrench his wrist away and plunge the needle home. Vesimir was faster. He turned the needle and clawed it out of Jadrick’s grip, throwing him hard against the wall and jamming the needle into Jadrick’s neck, right up to the chamber. Jadrick was frozen, his eyes wide and his chest heaving. He didn’t dare move. Vesimir’s trembling hand was poised on the plunger. One good push and the euthanizing agent would be free in Jadrick’s blood. 

Slowly, Vesimir drew the needle from Jadrick’s neck and pulled back. Jadrick gasped a huge breath and clapped his hand to his throat, sliding down the wall to sit against the wall, gasping back his life with a severe tremble. 

Both witchers looked up in shock when Geralt began to cough. 

His eyes, bright gold and fevered, opened moments after.

“Geralt, slow down!” Eskel demanded, a child’s petulance still cracking in at places between the lower points in his voice. Vesimir hid his smile as he watched the two boys chase each other across a log-turned-bridge, Geralt spinning with a flourish and a bow before flipping backwards off the log to roll and keep on running through the stream. Eskel swore clumsily and lept after him, still with much more grace than most full grown men. 

Eskel and Geralt were fifteen, both strong young Witchers long healed from their trials. Geralt’s hair had started growing in stark white and his freckles had faded like morning stars during the first year after he woke from the experiments, and while Vesimir and Eskel took some time getting used to it, Geralt didn’t seem all that bothered. He was elated with his new abilities and the strength that coursed through him--a strength that he’d never even dreamed of on the cold nights when just getting the next breath felt like a mountain. 

After the incident right before Geralt woke up, the other Witchers never dared try anything on Geralt again. There was a silent agreement to put his experiments away and focus on his training, most of which was left up to Vesimir. Considering what he’d been put through, Geralt recovered in record time and Vesimir watched with a strange mix of trepidation and relief as he continued to mature.

Contrary to what most people thought, Witchers were not melded overnight. The trials took a matter of days, true, but they were done to boys because they needed the time and the catalyst of puberty to properly settle. True witchers mutated from the age of nine through twenty or even twenty three, their bodies re-wired to grow up differently. 

Coded by the grasses, their bodies went through more intense growth spurts, demanded more of them, and developed skills more quickly. New nerve paths grew every year and their eyes actually got sharper as their brains learned how to cope with the new receptor cells. Nerve development and vital organs developed first, bone and muscle density filling out later. A witcher at 17 was easily as heavy as a knight in plate, even if he was built like Geralt with the willowy strength of a dancer. 

The chance of a mutation going wrong in the later years was unheard of, but so was Geralt’s situation. 

When he was twelve, he stopped eating for three weeks because his stomach wouldn’t tolerate anything but water. Vesimir started fearing that the stages of tolerance he should have been experiencing that allowed Witchers to metabolize poisons as medication was causing Geralt’s body to reject everything and that he’d watch Geralt starve right before his eyes. 

It was an extremely stressful few weeks, but just when Vesimir was ready to drag Geralt to Nenneke he recovered over night and started eating anything and everything without reservation. His tolerance for raw poisons was greater than even many full grown Witchers, a fact proven when he accidentally ingested raw wolfbane. 

When he was fifteen, he went through a horrible bout of not being able to breathe properly for a good two months. He’d act fine, but then a fit would come over him and he’d be suddenly unable to draw a full breath. He’d wheeze for hours, sounding like he was barely staying conscious. He’d tried to hide it, like he was embarrassed, but Eskel confided in Vesimir that Geralt sometimes stopped breathing for long periods in the night and that it was starting to scare him. He’d stop breathing, his heart would begin to race, and just when Eskel was ready to shake Geralt awake he’d gasp back a horrible, choking breath into his stressed body. 

Vesimir saw the grimaces of pain Geralt tried to hide. Pain during growth spurts was expected. Their lungs developed and grew beyond any normal human constraints, and until that growth was done the process was horrible. Everything inside their bodies had to adjust and catch up, and Vesimir remembered his own stage all too well. Difficulty was normal--but not like this.

Then, after two months of wondering if Geralt’s lungs were just going to close up and fail, there was a fire. Geralt went into the smoke without hesitation, getting three younger boys out before diving back in for a forth. By the time everyone was clear and the fire was under control, Vesimir finally had the chance to catch Geralt and look him over, fearful for what the smoke must have done to his lungs.

“I’m fine, Vesimir,” Geralt had said, brushing him away in his impatience. “What about the others? How’s Lambert?”

“Lambert’s fine, just sit down foolish boy, and let me look at you!” Vesimir demanded, anger clouding his voice to cover his worry. Geralt huffed and looked angry himself, but he obeyed. Only after he’d settled did Vesimir realize that Geralt wasn’t having any trouble breathing at all. Not even a lingering cough from the smoke. 

He was fine.

It was later that Vesimir theorized that Geralt’s lungs had developed some kind of extra defense against smoke and toxin, and that the development had forced his diaphragm and intercostal muscles through a brutal race to catch up. When they did though, he could hold his breath longer than any of the other boys on dives and his meditative breathing was almost non-existent.

A Witcher’s heart matured last. Taken brutally from childhood and forced into training early, the strengthening of the heart was one of the most vital things that prepared a child for the trials. Any child that couldn’t keep up with the vicious running routines was usually delayed or forced harder until he could. Without that focus, the heart was the first thing to fail under the grasses.

The hole in Geralt’s closed up with the first round, but there wasn’t a noticeable change after the second round. Not until he turned nineteen and Vesimir started to hear it speed at odd times. Geralt himself didn’t seem to notice--or at least didn’t seem concerned, but it scared Vesimir half to death. He’d been holding his breath for nine long years, watching Geralt grow stronger and yet dreading that they’d threaded some waiting bomb into his body with the experiments and that at any moment it would go off and he’d just drop. 

Every time Geralt’s heart would race, it took Vesimir back to the butterfly heart inside Geralt’s infant body and the first night he’d held him, and he felt helpless all over again.

For an entire year, Geralt’s heart stumbled, fluttered, lept, raced, and then settled again, as though it couldn’t decide which way to turn. It suited its owner. Geralt had grown fiery and dry-witted, unbelievably fast with a blade and eager to strike out. He was chomping at the bit, but as per their training he wasn’t allowed to strike out alone until he’d reached twenty.

Vesimir was restless the last days of Geralt’s last spring as a student. The moment the snows drained from the peaks he’d be heading out on the Path for the first time, and Vesimir was anxious to watch him go. Too many witchers died on their first years just by overconfidence alone, and Geralt had that in spades. It did comfort him that Eskel was going at the same time, but he knew that Geralt couldn’t and wouldn’t have someone watching his back forever.

Eventually he’d be on his own.

The dawn was cold when Vesimir finally realized that Geralt was truly ready, that it was only Vesimir himself that couldn’t accept it. 

The Keep was quiet, most of the Witchers still asleep. Vesimir was surprised to hear someone stirring, and, recognizing the gait but still not quite able to believe his ears, he turned, raising his eyebrows to see Geralt approaching him in full armor. 

The chain glittered, the swords were carefully polished, and his wolf medallion swung gently against his chest, mostly buckled down by his sword belts. Geralt’s hair was tied back and he’d clearly taken the time to wash it the night before--a sure sign he didn’t expect to have the chance again for a long time.

None of that threw Vesimir like the steady plodding inside Geralt’s chest did. 

A witcher’s heart beat only once for every four of most men--and it was by that steady cadence you knew he was finally ready. Vesimir had been listening to Geralt’s heart since he was a newborn, shepherding him with a fearful hand through his young years and his many challenges. Never before had it sounded like it did that morning. 

Vesimir had to swallow the lump in his throat as he rose and buried his reaction, smiling at Geralt and clapping him on the shoulder, teasing him about being green and over-eager even as he scooped up oatmeal and goat’s milk and pressured Geralt into taking a good breakfast before he struck out. As Geralt ate and talked of his plans to go south, to perhaps take a contract or two with Eskel first, Vesimir listened.

He listened to his words, and he listened to his heart. It was faster now, excited with the promise of freedom only hours away, but it was still a matured, healthy, Witcher’s heart. It was loud, and strong, and steadier than Kaer Morhen’s foundation. A far cry from the determined flutter Vesimir had grown to love and yet very clearly the same heart. Geralt was grown. The mutations were over. He no longer had to worry about one going wrong and stealing Geralt too soon. 

While Vesimir still had a hard time watching Geralt and Eskel as their swords disappeared over the first hill towards the south, he knew he didn’t have to fret any more. Geralt would face untold dangers and probably meet the same fate that all Witchers did--but he’d already proven himself far too stubborn to perish easily. This child that should never have been conceived, never had made it past his first year, had fought his way into becoming the strongest young Witcher Vesimir had ever seen, with an equally strong arm at his side. 

No. Vesimir didn’t have to worry about Geralt or Eskel. 

Didn’t mean that he wouldn’t, though. 

And it certainly didn’t mean that he held back tears of pride and joy when Geralt’s fierce excitement and proud heart came beating back into the walls of Kaer Morhen that winter after, either.


End file.
